Import Ex Works delivery date in purchasing

[madlercm]

Hi experts,

I have a business case for which I could not find any solution, and would like to hear your ideas and experience:

In purchasing, when you import, in some cases you buy FOB or Ex Works. In the purchase order the delivery date reflects the date when the goods arrive at our plant, and also MRP understands this date the same.

But, in the order print you should reflect to the vendor the date on which he should be ready in his plant/port/country; this date is not managed at all in the system.

Furthermore, the same problem exists with confirmations, when the vendor confirms the date on which he is "delivering" Ex Works, but the system expects to have in the confirmation (especially if it's relevant for MRP) the delivery date in our plant!

Needles to say, that in import scenarios transport time is meaningful, being a large part of the total lead time.

Thanks,

Mario

[Former Member]

Can't Routes help in this process?

Regards

Waza

[Former Member]

Routes and how they work.

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_45b/helpdata/en/dd/5607e7545a11d1a7020000e829fd11/content.htm

Requested delivery deadline

minus transit time

-------------------------------------------------------

=Goods issue deadline

The goods issue deadline is calculated to ship it earlier to arrive at the requested delivery time at the customer.

A lot of different deadlines are shown in the customer order position details.

[Former Member]

Hi Mario,

    I was wondering if you found any solution. We have exactly same issue that you explained. For incoterm EX-works my understanding is that SAP doesnot has any solution. I am not sure if there is anything in SRM. Here is what we did.

1. We added a tab at the Vendor master where we store transportation time for vendor for each delivering plant.

2. We also created a new field on the Purchase order called 'ship Date' which is calculated based on incoterm and subtracts the transportation time defined on Vendor Master from the delivery date.

3. We print ship date or delivery date on the purchase order based on incoterm.

We still have problem with acknowledgements and especially when doing Vendor performance. How do you evaluate Vendor performance. The best case we can come out with is to compare the ship date with invoice date. We are really struggling with it.

Can you enlighten me on if you found any other solution. Especially from acknowledgement perspective. We are in process of going for Supplier portal and I am afraid since this is a custom field how will SAP SUS handle the ship date.

Additionally change in ship date doesnot necessarily means change in delivery date because you can plan accordingly with your transportation partner.

Please let me know if you found any good solution.

Regards

Srikant

[rubenswalter_blattler]

Here in our company, we're considering the transit time in the "Goods receipt processing time" field. In fact, we know this field wasn't created to this proposal, but the system consider it to calculate the delivery date sent to the vendors.

My best regards.

[ajitkumar]

i think it is possible to maintain different planned delivery time at VSR level. but can be defaulted into PO only in SAP retail.

[Former Member]

This message was moderated.

[madlercm]

Thanks for the link; it is on the same subject, but is not offering any solutions or remedies to the issues on hand.

[eduardo_hinojosa]

Hi Mario,

I'm not sure if it will help you, but well, it's an idea. I understand that you are managing inbound deliveries, so, you are managing routes. Please, see Note 146829 - Process flow of route schedule, perhaps it helps you to set realistic dates.

Other possibility would be change dates in schedule with ME_PROCESS_PO_CUST in method PROCESS_SCHEDULE, changing the value for SLFDT and manage this dates in the form for the output message. You could use customer tables to manage this lead time during the travel.

I hope this helps you

Regards

Eduardo

[madlercm]

Thanks Eduardo,

I checked the note, but it is only valid for outbound deliveries (SD). And also, inbound deliveries are created later in time, when transportation is becoming relevant.

My issue is how to cater from this from the beginning, in the purchase order.

[csaba_szommer]

The delivery date (EBAN-LFDAT; EKET-EINDT) is the date when the goods have to be received into your warehouse (storage location).

If you decrease this date by the planned delivery time (which may come from vendor master, material master, infor record - based on your settings in V_399D_W-GTERM), you will get the date on which the goods have to be dispatched fromt he vendor. Planned delivery time is stored both in purchase requisition (EBAN-PLIFZ) and in purchase order (EKPO-PLIFZ).

So, if you do a simple calculation on your form, you will get the date on which the vendor has to deliver the goods (e.g. in case of EXW, in the vendor's warehouse).

(this also means - as far as I understand - that SAP AG didn't want to store the dates but the length of the intervals in data tables)

You can override the planned delivery date both in PReq ("Quantities/Dates" tab) and in PO ("Delivery" tab) if the default value has to be modified (e.g. due to different incoterms).

Worth of reading:

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/3015d3dd-136a-2c10-3cac-ac122fb42...

Edited by: Csaba Szommer on Jan 29, 2012 4:39 PM

[madlercm]

Thank you Csaba,

I think that planned delivery time is the time from issue of PO to vendor, until it is received in our warehouse, see:

http://help.sap.com/erp2005_ehp_06/helpdata/en/f4/7d29f344af11d182b40000e829fbfe/content.htm

http://help.sap.com/erp2005_ehp_06/helpdata/en/f4/7d2a0d44af11d182b40000e829fbfe/content.htm

At least this is how MRP is using PDT, so we can't use it differently.

And also it will not work for confirmations, since vendor confirms a date (exworks), but in the confirmation I have to enter the date when it is received in plant, in wich case manual computation is required.

[csaba_szommer]

Yes, you are right, I was mistaken on PDT.

...I don't know any standard solution for it.

I worked with IS-Oil TD bulk shipment, there's a so called in transit storage location integrated into the logistics process, however I'm not sure about the planning and EDI confirmation part of it.

Generally, in standard SAP you can use a separate plant / storage location corresponding to truck / ship, but in this case your whole procurement process will be very sophisticated, especially if you have such processes related to several supplier.

One more thing: I've found is an IS-Retail solution for seasonal procurement, in which it is possible to "assign transfer dates to incoterms":

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_erp60_sp/helpdata/en/42/cde0cc38391369e10000000a1553f7/frameset.htm

As for confirmations, in your case, the vendor could do a "loading confirmation" / "transport confirmation" which is the date when the goods are delivered (e.g. given to the driver) and this would not be relevant to GR:

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_erp60_sp/helpdata/en/75/ee13e855c811d189900000e8322d00/frameset.htm

However, it doesn't solve your original problem how to print the right date onto the PO.

[Former Member]

Although the point you are making is correct and there is no direct solution for the problem, you can try using progress tracking with POs in such cases.

It is not giving you any control or notifications and all, but atleast you can maintain all necessary steps required and track the progress in system. This tracking is manual and you need to enter all the steps and planned dates and actual dates.

Regards,

Dakshesh